Today is the first day of NaNoWriMo, so of course I spent it working on something that ISN’T a 50k word novel. I’ve been working on this story for well over a year, mostly because I keep forgetting I want to finish it. Today it’s done, and I’m ready to move on to a new season of the Suburban Mysteries – after November, of course! As all of the mysteries are based on true stories, sometimes the trouble with writing them is finding real life mysteries. So if you have any true life mysteries that you’d like to see lampooned in the form of Kendall and Chad, stumbling their way through suburban life, leave me a comment or send me an email.

A behavioral therapist once told me that we have a tendency to repeat our mistakes over time, and we can’t break that cycle until we recognize WHY we make those mistakes. I ended up listening to this audiobook in the same way I ended up watching Boogie Nights. I heard a description, assumed it was about one thing, and then was very surprised to end up watching porn with my mother. It’s obvious I don’t fully read the description before I checked out Maestra. The first line of the blurb made it sound great for a commute listen – a young English woman working as an assistant in an art gallery….Boom! Downloaded. Sounds like girly fun!

Chad was in the garage with Bon Jovi cranked up on the old stereo system, but he could still hear the girlish shrieks coming from inside the house. Kendall had been on Skype with her old sorority sisters for over an hour and she was still shrieking in that special way women show excitement when they’re with each other.

“Dang it, Kendall” Chad said, more to himself than to his wife, Kendall, who was nowhere within earshot. Chad had spent the past two minutes trying to figure out why the bedside lamp wasn’t turning on, only to discover that it had been unplugged.

Kendall shut the kitchen window firmly, hoping to drown out the sounds of a million screeching Valkyries coming from the garage. Chad was back from his fraternity reunion near Cincinnati, Ohio, and had brought back a little something from his trip.

I have many talents and abilities. I’m an OK flute player. I can make a frog puppet out of my fingers. I can do push-ups. I’m usually pretty good at my job. I’m good at setting lots of personal goals. One thing I’m NOT so good at is following through on those goals. I’ll walk into a room and grandly announce that I’m going to paint the room purple, but then I’ll use that money to buy jeggings. Or maybe I’ll change my mind and think that gold paint would look better than purple. I’m a combination of easily distracted and self absorbed that has on two separate occasions resulted in 1. my nearly getting hit by a Ghostbusters replica vehicle and 2. me stepping up to my knee in freshly poured cement.

In 2017 I’m going to do the #unreadbookshelfchallenge proposed by Twitter user @bythesheetstore. She proposes we read at least a book a month to clear our backlog of books we’ve hoarded.

I’ve got a ton – most are partially finished. As I’ve become lazy and am now mostly reading on Kindle or listening to audiobooks, I’m going to focus on analog books. My shelf is an odd mishmash of horrible chick lit, draft romance novels my brother gets from work, top ten bestsellers passed on by my boss, self published stuff my mom has picked up, and cheesy self help books assigned to me by other people. Side note: if someone offers you a self help book, they’re telling you that you need it. So it’s probably not the best idea to yell “BLAAAAHHHH” halfway through and whip it across your bathroom.

If you’re interested in this, you can tag your progress using the #UnreadBookshelfChallenge. Let’s deal with this mess!